it's also caliborn & calliope's birthdays! so 413 = kids, 612 = trolls, 10/24 = both, 11/11 = cherubs and now 914 = hiveswap, i suppose :3c
Spoiler I figured the picture was an older one--it doesn't sound like Joey and Jude's grandpa has been around much for a long time, and that means they've probably had a babysitter for a while. that picture could be pretty old. and like....the drinking part I can see being iffy because it's Roxy, but she was mentioned as working at a lab. most people who do that have like, graduated college or something, they aren't 19.
Decided to try a bit of it just to see if it was running at all. Seems to be working just fine. Overall I am pleasantly surprised. With its complicated development history I was having doubts in terms of quality. Also very glad we ditched the 3D for this stuff. Something good came of the first team bailing.
Spoiler She had, but I think this is the first time he realized that she did it unprompted - and it comes after she's called him by the wrong name several times, in a way that seems like she just didn't care what his name was. Plus, he's just gotten rescued from being crushed to death; if there's any time he's going to be grabbing at tiny, random details, that's likely to be it. If my knowledge of the current timeline is correct, Spoiler this is supposed to be at least one Heiress before Feferi, possibly more. She definitely doesn't have the Peixes symbol, though. What I'm interested in is this "Rites of Maturation" thing; Xefros made Dammek a cake to celebrate his wriggling day early, since it was going to fall after when Dammek would need to go do those - which implies that getting shipped off-planet is a staggered thing, instead of the "one whole generation in a fell swoop" kind of deal that I've generally seen pictured. Which means that 1) Dammek is at least a few months older than Xefros, possibly more, and 2) there may be a wide ranges of ages in the kids on-planet! It's also interesting that, despite his (weak) telekinesis, Xefros is expecting to be shunted into being a butler - he's not worried about being turned into a Helmsman at all. Is it just because he figures his psionics aren't good enough? Or are Helmsmen not nearly as common-use as we thought? (I also was really excited to see that band poster on Dammek's wall, though - one person on it has a Libra symbol, and the other visible person has an Aries symbol. So the canon troll kids are definitely not the only ones (besides their ancestors) to hold those symbols, with the possible exception of Karkat.) I didn't get a good look at the calendar, since I was watching it from a friend's stream (I'm going to be playing it tomorrow or the next day, depending on how long it takes me to get things up and running), but the nostalgia bombing and the existence of pogs as a thing Jude is eager to have around and thinks is cool has the year nailed around '94 or '95 for me? Spoiler Which would mean that it's entirely possible that Jade has already landed and that's why Jake has so thoroughly fucked off - Joey says that the last she knew of, he was somewhere in the Pacific, but her information is a few years old. And it'd explain why Roxy's so stressed as to be drinking heavily, because she's having to juggle two mostly-abandoned kids and a brand-new toddler, and probably can't just bring the toddler over because Jake has made the place a goddamn deathtrap as far as small children go. (On the other hand: this doesn't seem to be where Rose entered from. But nothing says Roxy couldn't have moved at some point...) How Joey and Jude are related, though, seems to be in the same way that Dad Egbert and Dad Crocker are: they're technically half-siblings to the rest of the Crocker/Harley/Egbert/English family group. It seems like Dad Egbert and Nanna definitely don't know Jake had kids, though; I suspect Roxy wouldn't be having to handle this on her own, if they did. And that Jake has so thoroughly vanished on his kids, and left Roxy as caretaker, is begging a really big question: what the hell happened to Joey and Jude between 'now' and the start of SBURB? I mean, best case is going to be that someone realized that they only had a functional alcoholic babysitter for a caretaker, and that no one was actually doing much in the way of housekeeping or household maintenance around that mansion, and probably Roxy being 'encouraged' to hire a couple housekeepers and maintenance people so that she's not doing all this on her own. Worst case...worst case has potential to go really dark, considering that 1) the house is full of weapons and also doesn't look like anyone's keeping an eye on things like household maintenance (the kids are living off of takeout and there's a mess of books and broken shelving that the dog caused three years ago; the house hasn't quite passed the point where it feels like it's one step away from being appropriate to a horror game, with the exception of the kitchen, but it's getting there), and 2) the kids are being menaced by monsters. (And possible 3) Roxy and Rose weren't living in a place that looked anything like this house, and what I saw of the landscape doesn't suggest that they could feasibly live anywhere nearby.) (Middling case is, Joey got old enough to petition for custody of Jude, and moved herself and Jude out of there and into somewhere more manageable. Or hired some housekeepers and groundskeepers for the place, at least.)
The game was fun, and I'm looking forward to more, but I got stuck on getting the cuebat. I would never have figured out that Spoiler using telekinesis on the pile of bent spoons would cause Xefros to bend another spoon and put it in his inventory. I didn't notice his telekinesis was usable until I was prompted to use it on the vault, and the spoons looked like they'd already been bent. According to the dates on Joey's diary, it's set in 1994. I think the entry she makes during the game is dated as the eleventh of November? So a little over a year before Jade landed, since Jade turned 13 in December 2008.
Spoiler in Homestuck, only yellowbloods are ever mentioned as being forced to become helmsmen, so I think it's at least heavily implied that only yellowbloods end up with that job, which is possibly partly because they're the only caste that has psionics (psionics, like Sollux and Mituna and The Psiioniic's powers, are stated by Vriska to be common to mutants in that caste--which to me suggests that they're specific to the yellowblood caste, and maybe even that only psionic yellowbloods have the potential to be helmsmen, and not just any psychic troll), and probably partly because of caste system bullshit. also, Sollux and The Psiioniic's powers are stated to allow them to move massive objects at high speeds--their powers are uniquely suited to powering ships, where Xefros's telekinesis is weak and he definitely couldn't do that. the helmsmen don't just power ships by having psychic abilities, they also need to be able to actually use those abilities to move the ship, and Xefros seems implied to be unable to do that without, like, dying. also, given that psionics are supposedly common in only mutants of the yellowblood class, and psionics seem to be best-suited to the job of helmsmen, it's entirely possible they're not as common-use as people thought. I mean, given that they're allowed to live because they're useful in spite of being mutants, there are probably at least more of them than you might expect, but it's likely that there aren't that many of them overall. also. okay. so. in Dammek's lab or whatever, the room Joey first runs into and traps herself in to avoid Dammek's lusus--am I the only one who noticed a thing that looked like what Karkat's lusus looks like on one of the monitors or whatever in there? because it is stated that the only reason Karkat has a lusus is because the previous followers of the Signless prepared for the arrival of another mutantblood--what if Dammek is part of that movement that engineered that lusus? or what if Dammek is like, studying that lusus because it's different from 'normal' lusii?
I'm scared to look in too many spoilers til I go through at least once so Spoiler: Help request I'm stuck at the part just after getting the hoverboard, where Joey can go from kitchen to bedroom to the room with the air vent, trying to appease the lusus. I can't use items on the door? How do I get this milk-in-bowl to the lusus...
Spoiler You should be able to use the milk in the bowl on the kitchen door. I think you might have to stand a little away from it to get it to register properly? The controls are kind of janky.
also you should try Spoiler putting the pigeon into the air vent, it gives you a fun bit of flavor text
Spoiler Joey at one point says that she started using her mom's last name, while Jude is still using PA's. so i think they're just regular siblings. of course this means (assuming this takes place in the Beta timeline, which i thiiiiiiiiink it does) that Jake's last name is Harley! which i guess we could have guessed from that being Jade's last name, but still, interesting.
Spoiler oh yeah, oops, misrememered because the drone and Karkat's lusus have some physical similarities. and also I kind of just want to know more about how they engineered a lusus and all.
